Whoosh...
As the air screamed past his ears, its resistance ruffled both Max's unseen mop of blue and the projected blonde hair he was rocking as a disguise at the same time; the glass windows of the hotel blurred into a solid sheet of reflective light while he picked up speed, plunging downwards towards the plaza below, which had already erupted into a scene of chaos and terror.
'Ah, I'm not wearing my Rider fit, should I still call that shit out?.. Bah, like anyone down there will know the difference... Ooooo, what song to try out first?.. Something aggressive for sure... Oh snap! I'll give 'em the Doom!' Max thought to himself while speeding towards the ground, and his first target.
A few of the stronger Humans were starting to resist the Shura warriors as best they could, but they had all been caught off guard from the sneak attack and were terribly unorganized to boot.
Suddenly, a roar sounded out from above, overtop of all the other loud noises below the rapidly descending Max, drawing the attention of the combatants right as he arrived.
"RIDER KICK!"
BOOM!
Max landed heavily in the plaza with outstretched right-foot carving down in an arc, right on the back of a single-horned Shura soldier's head, causing them to very-fatally faceplant into the now-smashed ground underneath Max's large sneaker, which looked like a suave, brown-leather pair of Oxford-styled dress shoes to everyone else.
There was a sparkle of lights and a 4-inch-long, black brick flashed into existence, hovering beside Max.
The little rectangle turned out to be an ultra-compact home entertainment system, boasting an expansive library of preloaded songs.
Among them were numerous tunes that Max instantly recognized, a pretty sweet discovery considering Super God Gene was set thousands of years in the future compared to his original Earth. The familiarity of the music, despite the vast gulf of time, making the cut in the audio player's library made the device all the more important to Max.
He came across this a few days ago while poking around the shops and had the bright idea to give himself a soundtrack whenever he wanted. It had quite obviously also been given the Beast Soul treatment.
"What's up fuckers?", Max addressed the stunned Shura in front of him, then snapped his fingers while asking, "Hey, what do you call someone that hypes up the troops while leading the charge himself?".
The Beast Soul speaker started playing as soon as it was summoned. The sound being blasted out wasn't a melody, and a feeling of calm surely was not being emitted.
Quite the opposite in fact.
The song that started playing was more of a rhythmic, distorted rock-and-roll chug with sublime base notes and electronic touches.
...Waaaamb - waaaamb nu-numu-nu-numu-nunu-nu-... - thump - thump - thump...
Every low-tuned distortion felt like a physical weight dropping into the plaza, building an unbearable atmospheric pressure that felt unnatural to the Shura, making the very air suddenly feel extra thick and violent.
"A 'Battle-Bard', and this here is my war-drum... Hey, Hey, Hey! Let's not start until the beat really drops, okay?"
The handful of Shura closest to Max's first victim had risen back to their feet and retreated quite a few steps back to regroup with the ones that hadn't been knocked down, who had also regained their wits at this point.
All of them now raised their weapons towards Max, immediately attempting to pull their triggers and blast him. But to the Shura warriors' horror, they remained frozen in those poses, unable to fire.
Max scanned the area with his eyes, watching the civilians with no combat power flee for safety. He had frozen the Shura mid-step by locking all of the metal components in their weapons and combat gear, preventing them from moving for the time being, allowing the more helpless humans time to escape.
A handful of Evolvers and one other Surpasser stayed behind and properly prepared themselves to fight back; taking advantage of the immobile Shura to summon all of their best Beast Soul armors and weapons.
"Wha-what is this!?" A single Shura in the group in front of Max screamed. She had two golden horns and was the leader of this Shura strike team. This elite couldn't quite grasp what was happening.
'Were we unlucky enough to attack this place while a Demi-god was around? Usually, only Demi-gods possessed strange abilities and an overwhelming presence like this!'
"It's called, 'The only thing they fear is you." Max answered the question posed by the Shura woman incorrectly on purpose.
Everyone's eyes were now fixed on the sharply dressed man. The frozen Shura and the remaining Human fighters alike remained still, they were all confused as hell.
Both sides were unable to understand what the strange Beast Soul playing music was, and the intensely crackling purple, pink, and white aura howling around Max was a strange contrast to the business attire he was wearing, adding to how out-of-the-norm this scene was.
The fact that he hadn't summoned any other Beast Souls like protective armor led the humans to all guess the same thing as the Shura in their heads at the same time, while simultaneously being overjoyed.
'Demi-god!?'
At this point, there was around 10 seconds left before the beat really picked up in the song Max was getting hyped up to, so he dropped one more slow sentence.
"And guess what? It's the last song you'll ever hear... Let's rock!"
The pink and purple aura around Max intensified, white lightning crackled and he rocketed forward right after dropping one of Dante's best lines from 'Devil May Cry 3', releasing most of the grip [Electromagnetism] had on the Shura as he moved.
Before the Shura could even react, all of the bladed weapons left the Shura soldiers' hands and rushed towards Max,
Instead of hitting him, the stolen broad swords, katanas, and combat knives abruptly halted in mid-air. They snapped into a precise, uniform ring, levitating and spinning rapidly behind his back like a metallic halo.
The crackling purple, pink, and white energy howling around him partially bled into the metal weaponry he had just hijacked, making the newly-acquired floating arsenal hum and glint with a destructive, sinister looking sheen.
Max grinned, striking a sharp, stylized pose amid the storm of flying steel. "Fantasy Form 15, combat style: Noctis!" he yelled with a shit-eating grin on his face that he simply just couldn't suppress. The spinning ring of blades instantly expanded and locked into position around him.
"Armiger Unleashed!"
With a thought, Max focused his magnetic polarity on a heavy, 6-inch-wide Shura broadsword at the front of his floating wheel. He kicked it out of the air, launching it forward like a railgun projectile.
The blade tore through the air like a streak of light, embedding itself deeply into the chest armor of a Shura elite at the very back of the plaza.
"Warp-Strike!" Instantly reversing his magnetic charge, Max used the embedded sword as an anchor point. The crazy magnetic pull snatched his entire body forward, violently ripping him through the air at supersonic speeds.
To the Shura and humans watching, he didn't just move—he more-or-less teleported, leaving a vacuum-pop of distorted air where he had been standing a millisecond prior.
BOOM!
Max appeared instantly at the rear of the enemy line, his concealed high-tops hitting the ground and squealing as he grabbed the hilt of the thrown broadsword.
His body didn't even seem to travel—it simply blurred into a blink-and-you-miss-it line of kinetic force.
A split second later, the rest of the levitating blades caught up and closed in, dive-bombing the nearby Shura in a dazzling, rapid-fire flurry of slashes.
Max wrenched the sword free, spun it casually in his hand, and smirked at the terrified alien soldiers. "Next up on the playlist is a little number called: 'Full Moon 2.0, by RJ Pasin'... Shame you aren't gonna make it past the current track... Fuck around and find out, I guess."
He then turned his head and called out to the rest of the Human fighters, who had turned into slack jawed bystanders, including the other Surpasser, who had around 6 gene locks open herself.
"Hey, I really could do this all by myself, but still, what are you all sitting around for? Let's. Fucking. GO!"
Max rotated his power and started a spree while enjoying his combat emulation of the main protagonist from Final Fantasy he had taken on, all while still wearing Nanami's skin.
A pair of round sunglasses suddenly appeared on his face, making him look even more like Nanami, minus the different color of the lenses.
Multiple blips sounded and red outlines suddenly popped into Max's vision, courtesy of the Reed Specials. He could keep track of the Shura Warriors by the feel of their armor alone but Max simply enjoyed his 'heads-up-display' and treated it like a fun accessory in battle sometimes.
'This is super cool, but I still prefer using my God Dust...'
...
Several miles away from the battle taking place at the Aetherius Grand, a tactical strike was called on the building housing the main teleportation hub of the city.
The Shura knew that more private teleporters existed all over the city, but if they could stop the main ones from functioning, and therefore get rid of more Humans instead of letting them escape to the sanctuaries, well, then good.
The building itself was important enough to receive shielding from things like electromagnetic interference so the Shura had shot physical missiles in a bid to destroy it instead, when they realized one of their key targets still had the lights on.
Boom Boom Boom!
But instead of destroying their target, the warheads detonated on the edge of a gleaming, purplish pink shield that had popped into existence seconds before they reached the building.
Max had summoned his God Dust and sent it racing towards the building several minutes before the Shura struck.
The only thing he was concerned and serious about was being able to get back to the sanctuaries safely himself.
Protecting the building with a shield of his electromagnetic energy-with the God Dust supporting it in a spread-out spider web of particles, was something he had planned to do a few days ago, after seeing the place get leveled, while using [Destiny] a few days ago.
...
The sheer ferocity of Max's assault and the bizarre form it took caught the Shura entirely off guard, but a few hardened veterans at the edge of the plaza managed to react on pure instinct. Three of them swung their heavy plasma rifles around, unleashing a volley of energy blasts directly at Max's new position after he 'teleported'.
That was when [Domino] silently took the wheel.
Instead of blowing Max to pieces, the local probability field warped reality in a spectacular chain reaction of pure, chaotic support.
The first Shura slipped on a patch of fresh Human blood on the pavement, causing his rifle to jerk upward as he fired. The stray plasma blast missed Max completely, screaming into the sky and obliterating the stone cornerstone of a nearby building.
CRACK!
A massive chunk of decorative masonry broke free and plummeted straight down, landing directly on the helmet of a Shura attempting to flank Max from behind.
The impact rendered him instantly unconscious; he didn't even have time to hit the ground before the other Surpasser on scene flashed into place in front of his falling form.
With both of her delicate looking hands suddenly pressed against his armored chest, a shockwave erupted, blasting the now lifeless Shura into one of his companions. Together, they were hurled through the entrance of the Aetherius Grand, kicking up a huge cloud of dust and rubble.
The second veteran soldier's blast ricocheted violently off the broadsword Max was still holding at a mathematically impossible angle. The deflected bolt zipped across the plaza and shot directly into the barrel of the third soldier's rifle just as he pulled the trigger.
The resulting energy collision caused the rifle to explode in the soldier's hands. The concussive force spun him around like a top, his finger instinctively flicking the safety off and locking on the trigger of his secondary sidearm his hand went for as he fell.
A wild stream of friendly fire sprayed through the holster horizontally into the Shura ranks, hitting two more soldiers in their guts, while safely flying past the Evolvers doing battle with them.
Max didn't even need to duck the laser and plasma bolts with [Domino] in play, but he went through the paces of combat anyways.
He stopped blinking around and stood still, skillfully handling the bladed weaponry under his absolute command, music blasting from his Beast Soul speaker, as the entire enemy force collapsed in seconds thanks to a mix of sheer, ridiculous misfortune, revenge and anger fueled human effort, and Max's storm of blades.
His above-average Surpasser-level reflexes, [Domino], [Electromagnetism] and Heavenly-Go allowed him to dance and navigate around the battlefield easily too, if he hadn't felt like standing his ground.
Max finally left his position and casually stepped two inches to the left while one of last remaining invaders in the hotel plaza threw a dagger at him, one he hadn't confiscated earlier.
A smile played across his face and Max lifted his hand, sending a bolt of electromagnetic energy into the offender's chest. As the dagger flew towards him, Max accelerated its speed.
It flew past his cheek and embedded itself perfectly into the throat of the last Shura standing in the plaza - the female commander with golden horns.
"Urk!" She fell to her knees, clutching her impaled throat. Moments later, she stopped breathing and the plaza became one of the only quiet places in the entire city.
"Haha, good stuff!" Max chuckled, breaking the silence. The Humans all stared at the suave man while his healing factor instantly knitted together a tiny scratch on his cheek caused by the dagger moments earlier. "That was pretty intense, eh?"